This weekend a rather inquisitive 8 year old asked me where the saying "holy smokes" came from. I didn't know. Just did a quick Google search & an AWAD search and still came up empty. I'm willing to bet someone here knows the answer to my little friend's question.

I didn't claim a specific reference to smokes, but such euphemistic expletives tend to use rapidly varying "substrates", the concrete meaning being less important than the "emotional impact". Smoke has certainly scored high in this respect in recent times. Today I heard that Ireland has banned smoking from nearly all of public space. Mental asylums are one of the rare exceptions(!)

One suspects a connection between this exclamation and the idea of using smoke as a form of prayer. In both Old Testament times and in the modern church, incense is used and its rising smoke is compared to prayers rising from Earth to the Almighty.

"Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." (Psalm 141:2, Authorized Version)

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